Ann, Not Annie


Sage Steadman - 2017
    Easier said than done since Jacob isn't even aware she exists. The truth is, due to Ann's lively temper she spends more time in detention with the rest of the school rejects than she does fantasizing about Jacob Waters wearing spandex. Her best friend and devout alien believer, Lisa, doesn't like the changes she's seeing in her BFF. Neither does Danny Feller, a fellow detention inmate and resident lost boy who has started keeping an extra watchful and unwanted eye on Ann. When a chance encounter in an empty hallway changes everything, Ann finds all her dreams coming true and she is well on her way to living the perfect life she's always wanted. But appearances aren't always what they seem and Ann is going to have to face not just cold hard facts, but also her past.

Hyacinth Girls


Lauren Frankel - 2015
    After Callie is exonerated, she begins to receive threatening notes from the girl who accused her, and as these notes become desperate, Rebecca feels compelled to intervene. As she tries to save this unbalanced girl, Rebecca remembers her own intense betrayals and best-friendships as a teenager, when her failure to understand those closest to her led to tragedy. She'll do anything to make this story end differently. But Rebecca doesn’t understand what's happening or who is truly a victim, and now Callie is in terrible danger.This raw and beautiful story about the intensity of adolescent emotions and the complex identity of a teenage girl looks unflinchingly at how cruelty exists in all of us, and how our worst impulses can estrange us from ourselves - or even save us.

A Tortured Soul


L.A. Detwiler - 2020
    Detwiler comes a sinister horror with jaw-dropping twists.Everyone has a breaking point.At twenty, an unplanned pregnancy seals Crystal Holt into a marriage to the abusive Richard Connor. After a stillborn birth, Crystal insists they have the baby baptized postmortem. A cynic, a drunk, and a poor man, Richard has other plans. When her monstrous husband tosses the baby into the woods to be forgotten, Crystal instantly spirals. After beating her within an inch of her life, Richard does something else he's done before—he disappears. This time, however, things feel very different…With her husband gone, Crystal battles with the demons of abuse, dark childhood memories, and a declining mental state worsened by horrific nightmare sequences. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that something's not quite right about the way Richard disappeared this time, and Crystal is in more danger than ever. After all, not all of the dark secrets belong to Richard.Will Crystal be able to escape from a lifetime of torture unscathed, or will she succumb to the dark secrets she's fallen prey to before?A twisted page-turner that will shake even the toughest horror and thriller fans…

The Last Goodbye


Caroline Finnerty - 2013
    . . and sometimes we cannot shake off the shackles of decisions made by others in the past.Kate Flynn has spent her whole life running away. She reckons the best decision she ever made was to leave Ireland the day after she finished school. Having seldom returned since, she would be perfectly happy if she never had to go back there. She is happy in London where she runs a successful photography gallery with her best friend Nat, though their relationship is going through a rocky patch since Nat began an affair with a married man. When Kate becomes pregnant and her partner Ben persuades her to make the trip home, she is forced to confront everything she left behind and memories of Eva, the mother she feels betrayed her. Kate finds it impossible to forgive Eva who chose to refuse cancer treatment while pregnant and died, leaving a young family motherless. Do some wounds go too deep to ever heal? Must Eva's Choice forever deny Kate real happiness?The Last Goodbye is a powerful story of love and loss, forgiveness and new beginnings - a heart-wrenching and emotional page-turner for mothers and daughters everywhere.

The Family


Marissa Kennerson - 2014
    She has a caring mother and a controlling father. Her brothers and sisters are committed to her family’s prosperity… All one hundred eighty-three of them. Twig lives in the Family, a collective society located in the rainforest of Costa Rica. Family members coexist with values of complete openness and honesty, and they share a fear of contagious infection in the outside world. Adam—their Father, prophet, and savior—announces that Twig will be his new bride, and she is overjoyed and honored. But when an injury forces her to leave the Family compound, Twig finds that the world outside is not as toxic as she was made to believe. And then she meets Leo, an American boy with a killer smile, and begins to question everything about her life within the Family and the cult to which she belongs. But when it comes to Family, you don’t get a choice.Praise for The Family: “Fascinating and chilling, THE FAMILY takes you past the armed guards of a secluded compound where individualism is punished, technology is forbidden, and a charismatic leader plays God through terror and control. The novel’s relentless plot and vividly drawn characters will suck you in, but be warned: once you’re in the Family, it’s almost impossible to escape.” —Anna Schumacher, author of End Times “Eerie and suspenseful, Kennerson gives us a fascinating look into the psychology of cults and the meaning of Family.” —Bianca Turetsky, author of The Time-Traveling Fashionista

One Picture, Two Journeys


Tommy Gibbs - 2019
    A thousand miles and days of riding yield nothing. But then, about to turn home, Rand encounters a man living with crippling memories of a father he wishes he’d never known. The confrontation erupting between the two of them gives Rand the answer to a lifelong question and leaves the stranger at peace for the first time.

When You Leave


Monica Ropal - 2015
    Her father is gone, her mother doesn’t notice Cass exists, and her best friend’s battle with cancer was too close of a call. So when she begins her year at a wealthy new private school, Cass’s plan is to suffer through it in anonymity.However, when her cute locker neighbor, Cooper, shows an undeniable attraction toward Cass, keeping him at a safe distance isn’t easy. Even though her Frogtown skater world and his do-gooder preppy one are so different, Cass and Cooper somehow mesh. And once Cass lets her guard down, Cooper is mysteriously murdered—thus proving her original theory.When Cass’s close friend is suspected as the killer, she isn’t sure who she can trust anymore. Between investigating Cooper’s murder and trying to understand what she really meant to him, will Cass even find what she is looking for?Monica Ropal’s tension-filled and emotionally-charged YA debut explores the issues of an outsider looking in, and her desperation to find the impossible answers. Why do people leave? And who will be next?

The Flipside of Perfect


Liz Reinhardt - 2021
    She lives with her mother, stepfather, and two younger half sisters.Della spends every summer with her father in Florida. A free-spirited wild child, she spends as much time as possible on the beach with her friends and older siblings.But there’s a catch: AJ and Della are the same person. Adelaide Beloise Jepsen to be exact, and she does everything she can to keep her school and summer lives separate.When her middle sister crashes her carefree summer getaway, Adelaide’s plans fall apart. In order to help her sister, save her unexpected friendship with a guy who might just be perfect for her, and discover the truth about her own past, Adelaide will have to reconcile the two sides of herself…and face the fact that it’s perfectly okay not to be perfect all the time.

Amber Sky


Cassia Leo - 2019
    Her only company is Walker Ainsley, the rugged, handsome man who saved her from the wreckage and took her into his home. But when her ride back to town arrives after the crash, Cassidy can’t bring herself to leave Walker behind. She is determined to convince him to go back to town with her, until she begins to to question the strange circumstances that brought them together

Beautiful Country


J.R. Thornton - 2016
    He discovers a country in transition; a society in which the dual systems of Communist Era state control and an emerging entrepreneurial culture exist in paradox.A top ranked junior tennis player in the U.S., Chase joins the practices of the Beijing National Junior Tennis Team and is immersed in the brutal, cut-throat world of Chinese sport. It is a world in which gifted children are selected at the ages of six or seven for specialized sport schools where they devote their entire youth to the pursuit of athletic excellence and are paid as professionals by the state. Athletes find themselves compelled to do anything possible to succeed—right or wrong. Those who fail to reach the pinnacle are cast aside and are left facing a desperate future without hope.In China, Chase gains access to a culture rarely open to Westerners, and soon finds himself caught up in secrets. When his closest friend and teammate turns to him for help, Chase is faced with the dilemma of what to do when friendship, rules, and morals are in conflict.

Bred


Ginger Scott - 2019
    A lifeless tomb on the edge of Chicago’s Southside, the Alderman home sat in one of the city’s oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods, and Elena Alderman was the queen. She was also mad. Not the kind of madness that’s readily apparent. No, her psychopathy was far more surgical—more…insidious. She was surrounded by beautiful things—most notably her grand piano and her adopted son, Henry.I fell in love with both. My gift blossomed when my fingers touched her black and white keys. But my life began when I became haunted by the boy. Henry Alderman was a handsome blend of arrogance and seduction, and as we grew up together, I found it more and more impossible to separate him from my thoughts. I envied his life. I imagined how my name—Lily—would look with his. I became his closest friend…and more. I gave him my kiss, locked away his secrets, and loved him even when it was hard to.But we were just a game. Elena Alderman made the rules. And when she decided to change them, she broke everything. Almost.

Panther


David Owen - 2015
    Her depression, and its grip on his family, is tearing his life apart. When rumours start to circulate that a panther is roaming wild in his south London suburb, Derrick resolves to try and capture it. Surely if he can find a way to tame this beast, he’ll be able to stop everything at home from spiraling towards disaster?Panther is a bold and emotionally powerful novel that deals candidly with the effects of depression on those who suffer from it, and those who suffer alongside them.

Why Girls Are Weird


Pamela Ribon - 1999
    He's been bugging her to start writing again since her breakup with Ian over a year ago. And so what if the "Anna K" persona in Anna's online journal has a fabulous boyfriend named Ian? It's not like the real Ian will ever find out about it."The story started writing itself."Almost instantly Anna K starts getting e-mail from adoring fans that read her daily postings religiously. One devotee, Tess, seems intent on becoming Anna K's real-life best friend and another, a male admirer who goes by the name of "Ldobler," sounds like he'd want to date Anna K if she didn't already have a boyfriend. Meanwhile, the real Anna can't help but wonder if her newfound fans like her or the alter ego she's created. It's only a matter of time before fact and fiction collide and force Anna to decide not only who she wants to be with, but who she wants to be.

The Language of Goldfish


Zibby Oneal - 1980
    . . A kaleidoscope of shifting emotions come tumbling out as Carrie retreats little by little into her head".--Booklist. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

The Con Code


Shana Silver - 2020
     By day, seventeen-year-old Fiona Spangler runs small cons for her ritzy prep-school classmates: getting them out of tests and forging fake hall passes. But by night, Fiona joins her dad on riskier heists: stealing back the clue-filled forgeries her mom scattered across the country before she disappeared. Fiona desperately hopes that her mother will be waiting at the end of the scavenger hunt she left behind.And they are SO close. Just three more heists remain, but then disaster strikes when Fiona’s dad is captured by the FBI. Desperate to finish the job and save what’s left of her family, Fiona assembles of crew of teen criminals: a master of disguise who can transform into anyone, a talented hacker who only communicates in glares, and a rival con artist with a vendetta against—and possible crush on—Fiona.All they have to do is perform three nearly impossible heists, solve her mother’s incredibly complex clues, and evade the FBI. Easy, right?